


call me friend (but keep me closer)

by rauchblau



Series: the long light [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Gen, M/M, Oblivious Oikawa Tooru, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Romantic Tension, gratuitous magical details, head boy iwaizumi hajime, iwaizumi hajime is painfully aware of his crush on oikawa tooru at all times, literally everything about this fic is unresolved i warned you, seijou third years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23369395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rauchblau/pseuds/rauchblau
Summary: Seventh year at Hogwarts is for figuring out the future and finally wrenching the Quidditch Cup from Ushijima’s smugly superior hands. It’s definitely not for inopportunely timed gay crises over one’s Quidditch Captain and childhood best friend. Yet, here Hajime is.
Relationships: Hanamaki Takahiro & Iwaizumi Hajime & Matsukawa Issei & Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Michimya Yui & Iwaizumi Hajime
Series: the long light [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/623348
Comments: 24
Kudos: 136





	call me friend (but keep me closer)

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after ['speak each other in passing'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9200531), but it can also be read on its own. 
> 
> Thanks to the inofficial hymn of angsty Iwaoi, ['when the party's over'](https://open.spotify.com/track/43zdsphuZLzwA9k4DJhU0I) by Billie Eilish, for the title.

In fifth year, Hajime’s worst nightmare had been Oikawa Tooru, crumpled over a cracked broom handle.

Obviously, he thinks now from where he’s standing by the notice board, thronged by a swarm of excitedly chattering students, that ranking needs to be updated, because his _worst_ worst nightmare is definitely this: Oikawa Tooru, alive, striding towards him in swirling robes, one hand flung out to part the sea of bobbing heads, mouth stretching the mangled syllables of Hajime’s name to breaking point.

‘Iiiiiwa-chan! Iwa-chan! No slinking away, wait up!’

Hajime, with his back to the wall and an enthusiastic second-year’s elbow in his ribs, doesn’t point out how slinking anywhere is hardly a possibility right now.

Oikawa mercilessly pushes his way through the crowd until they’re almost chest to chest, his shoulder bumping into Hajime’s. Apparently satisfied, he cranes his neck to examine the roughly A3-sized poster freshly stuck to the notice board. Over the clamour of what must be at least thirty students all talking at once, Hajime watches his slow grin unfold with an abject sense of dread. So he does the only socially acceptable thing short of putting a silencing charm on him: he grabs him by the sleeve and starts manoeuvring them along the corridor wall.

‘Come on, we’re standing in the way.’

Oikawa lets himself be towed away happily – probably because he already has his voice pitched to carry.

‘So Iwa-chan, who are you taking to the Yule Ball as your date?’

 _Definitely_ his worst nightmare. Several younger students are now watching their exit with poorly veiled interest. Hajime rolls his eyes, but the gesture is lost on Oikawa, who is waving to their audience with his free hand.

He yanks on his sleeve to rein his focus back in. ‘I have literally _just_ put up the announcement.’

‘Oh Iwa-chan’, Oikawa says pityingly from half a step behind him, ‘didn’t you know? You don’t have to wait for an official announcement to ask someone to be your date.’

‘You’re an insufferable–’

Hajime remembers the lower-year students and swallows the rest of his sentence.

‘I just haven’t given it much thought yet’, he lies.

Oikawa clicks his tongue. ‘You’re Head Boy now, Iwa-chan. You need to give these matters some consideration. You have an image to uphold!’

‘And what are you, my CCO?’ Hajime grouses. ‘I have at least three more important things to think about at any given point in time.’

‘Mmmh.’

Somehow, Oikawa manages to endow this single syllable with both polite doubt and deep condescension.

They’re past the thick of the crowd now; there’s no reason to keep pulling him along. Hajime lets his hand drop back to his side, where it immediately curls into itself. He breathes out, and straightens his fingers.

‘Whom are you going with, anyway, if you think that’s so important?’

‘Ah’, says Oikawa. ‘That’s a surprise.’

At his secretive smile, something rears its head in Hajime’s chest. It’s a many-faced little feeling, strange and insistent, newly arrived only a few weeks ago – sometime between his second or third dream of kissing Oikawa, when it became clear that these weren’t just weird brain glitches, and Oikawa’s nonchalant declaration of his ‘perfect trust’ in Hajime right after that failed goal in their last match against Hufflepuff. Or maybe just that time last week when Hajime walked into their dorm room after Herbology and found Oikawa passed out cold on his homework in the least flattering way possible, with half his legs hanging off the bed and his mouth wide open, and instead of drawing a moustache on him or dropping something on his face all he wanted to do was tuck him in and maybe kiss him on the forehead.

Because Oikawa Tooru is selfish and childish and occasionally cruel, and he cultivates an annoyingly shallow public persona, but he’s also ambitious and brilliant and quietly kind. He sends Matsukawa to bed scolding and then sneaks back to the library to keep reading match summaries. He refuses to eat uncooked tomatoes with the exact same grossed-out face he made when he was four. He’s unduly hung up on ridiculous conspiracy theories and hits bludgers that clear the path to the hoop all the way from the other end of the pitch. Last week, he left a book on hair spells open on his table near the favourite armchair of that second-year girl who keeps complaining about her frizz, and then pretended to have some sudden urgent business at the Owlery. He remembers Hajime’s mother’s birthday, can’t give directions to save his life, once set Hajime’s favourite stuffed toy on fire while pretending to slay a dragon, knows the lyrics to way too many cheesy pop songs, and looks unfairly good with his tie done up properly, or rain-drenched and victorious on a broom, or even just walking down a goddamn corridor doing nothing in particular. He’s also entirely convinced of his own heterosexuality, and Hajime is utterly, utterly fucked.

‘You’re not going to say anything?’

He realises that, absurdly, he’s forgotten about Oikawa – at least about the one currently walking next to him.

Oikawa is good at surprises. For Hajime’s sixteenth birthday last year, he had the entire team crowd into their dorm at 5:30 in the morning to wake him before training, and Hajime would never have suspected a thing were it not for Kindaichi’s terrible poker face. Oikawa himself had never breathed a word, even though he’d been so proud of his custom-made Quaffle cake that he cried when it burst into a lively and only slightly flat rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ (one of the more mortifying memories of that day, admittedly). The point is, Oikawa is good at surprises, which means that right now, he’s either trying to gloss over the fact that he doesn’t have a date yet either, or he wants Hajime to settle in for a session of extensive needling.

In the context of Yule Ball dates, Hajime refuses to indulge him.

‘What am I supposed to say? If it’s a surprise, I’ll see on the day.’

Oikawa frowns.

Maybe that had been an oddly placid answer. ‘It’s not like I care either way’, Hajime adds, for good measure.

It’s not exactly his most convincing act, but Oikawa looks slightly cheered. ‘Ah, Iwa-chan, for a second there I almost thought you had really stopped caring.’

‘No danger of that, unfortunately’, Hajime mutters. ‘Now come on, let’s go get dinner. I need to be at the greenhouses in an hour.’

‘O-kay! Though, Iwa-chan, why did you walk us all the way to Ravenclaw Tower if you wanted to go to the Great Hall?’

Hajime is, it bears repetition, so fucked.

He sees the tally for the first time almost two weeks later, in History of Magic, after a neatly origami’d paper frog hops onto his desk, unfolding itself into a chocolate frog card of Herpo the Foul and a scribbled note that reads _u should hurry asking someone for the ball else only ppl like him will be left over_ with a tongue-in-cheek little face drawn beneath.

Sitting two tables over munching on a chocolate frog leg, Oikawa throws him a peace sign.

Hajime glares at him in response and obligingly tilts the note towards Hanamaki, who’s been trying to read it over his shoulder since it turned up.

‘Why is his personality so shitty?’, he complains sotto voce.

Hanamaki shrugs. ‘Don’t look at me, I don’t get your taste either. Though I gotta admit that his folded animals are nice.’

He ducks to rummage through his overflowing bag and pulls out a crumpled shred of parchment. After a makeshift and largely ineffective attempt at smoothing it out on the desk, he adds another mark to what looks like more than twenty so far.

‘Is that a tally of Oikawa telling people they should get Yule Ball dates?’ Hajime asks with mild curiosity, given that Professor Binns is currently going over the same textbook chapter on wizarding tax reform he already covered the week before.

‘Oh, you my poor innocent lamb’, Hanamaki sighs paternally. ‘It’s a tally of Oikawa telling _you_ you should get a Yule Ball date.’

Hajime groans. ‘No wonder I’m fed up with hearing it. What are the ones with the asterisks?’

‘Our personal favourites, of course. Let’s see.’ Hanamaki makes a show of trying to remember. ‘This most recent one was the one at training yesterday – “great shot, Iwa-chan, now if only you also had a shot at getting a date for the ball!” Then this one was when you were scheduling for that gobstone club second-year and you said “can I get a date for that?” – hate to say it, Iwaizumi, but you walked right into that one –, and oh, man, _this_ one–’

‘I get the picture, I think’, Hajime interrupts hastily.

Hanamaki snickers.

The tally gets two more marks by the end of lessons that afternoon. When they finally pile out of Potions class, Hajime is ready to punch Oikawa by instinct the next time he opens his mouth, so he foregoes their usual homework table in the library for the relative peace and quiet of Greenhouse Four. (For added bonus, Oikawa doesn’t like to go there, because his lack of sense for personal space tends to get him in trouble with the Venomous Tentacula.)

The greenhouses in winter are pockets inside time. Outside, the grounds are dusted with rime; the soil is hardening, life retreating underground to sleep away the cold and wait for spring. In here, they grow things year-round, for lessons and remedies, research and trading. The warm damp air is unlike any British season. It settles heavy and sheltering, ceaselessly coaxing things to fruition.

Yui finds him kneeling in front of a bed of fresh, dark earth, gloves discarded and seed trays scattered around him.

‘There you are’, she says brightly, tugging off her own gloves and woollen hat and crouching down next to him, extending a curious finger to touch one little, sparsely-leafed plant. ‘What are those?’

‘Chinese Chomping Cabbage’, Hajime replies, momentarily interrupting his work, and grins when she snatches her finger back. ‘Don’t worry, they’re too small to do anything yet. They tend not to go for human hands anyway, but we keep them here all the same, just to be on the safe side.’

Yui grins back and settles in the mulch next to him. ‘Wouldn’t do for them to develop a sudden appetite for first-years.’

She seems content to watch as he finishes transplanting the three seedlings in front of him. Her cheeks are still red from the cold and her short hair, mussed from the hat, is starting to frizz in the damp air. There’s a private kind of exhaustion in the set of her shoulders.

He pats down the earth around the last plant, brushes earth from a tiny leaf and turns to face her properly. ‘You were looking for me?’

Yui startles and sits up straighter. ‘Oh, yeah, actually. Oikawa said you were _probably_ _off sulking in the greenhouse with the murder plants_ ’ – she makes air quotes around the words – ‘and I could use a bit of fresh air, so, here I am. Did something happen?’

Hajime scoffs and sets about extricating another seedling from a new tray. It comes out in a scatter of soil. ‘He won’t get off my back about finding a date for the Yule Ball, since apparently it’s high time I make my pick, what with my representative function and all that.’

He gently shakes excess earth from the translucent roots. They’re not quite long enough yet to coil and hold the soil in place, but the plant is healthy-looking and sports its first defiant pair of adult leaves.

‘Ah, yes’, says Yui, stone-faced but eyes luminous with mischief. ‘I think I know three whole people who already have a partner. You better hurry, Hajime!’

They both laugh.

‘Your friends the same degree of meddlesome?’

‘My friends think a girl should be asked, not asking, so they meddle with boys who they think should ask me.’

‘My sympathies. I think I’ll take Oikawa’s nagging over that… Actually, hold on, now that you say it, I’m not sure if that’s not in the cards for me too.’ He shudders.

Yui grimaces, then scoots a little closer and unwinds her scarf. ‘Hey, let me help with these. I get solid E’s in Herbology, you can trust me not to kill any of them, I think. I’ve been stressed out of my mind with this Transfiguration essay – this seems like the kind of meditative task that would help.’

Hajime nudges another seed tray towards her. ‘Can’t dispute that. You can take these out, if you’d like. Just be careful not to damage their roots. Best give them a push through the holes at the bottom of the tray. The roots hold the earth just fine in most cases, unlike this little laggard.’ He indicates the seedling on his palm.

‘Then you’re the reason the entire House of Slytherin gets good marks in Herbology?’, she asks conversationally, gingerly setting about loosening the first plant from its plot.

‘Mostly by now they have a reputation to maintain’, Hajime says drily.

Yui laughs again and hands him the seedling, earth plug beautifully intact.

They work in silence for a while, and Hajime suspects they’re both glad about it. Most of their classes have become gruelling, with homework piling up and deadlines looming; and they’re both involved in entirely too many side projects to get a sufficient amount of sleep. Her hands cradle the little plants in a careful way he likes. Too soon, she sets the last seedling into her palm and pushes away the empty tray with a sigh of contentment.

‘Alright, I’m ready to talk about responsibilities again. You?’

Hajime doesn’t feel quite ready yet, but he gives the go-ahead anyway. ‘Shoot.’

She updates him on the staff meeting she attended earlier this afternoon, which appears to have been mostly about scheduling problems due to their Defense professor catching the flu (‘More time for that essay, at least’), and only a little about repeated sightings of students near the kitchen after curfew, which apparently led to the Arithmancy professor reproaching her that the prefects didn’t keep their houses in check well enough.

‘Knowing him, he’ll be lying in wait with a spreadsheet’, she sighs. ‘We’ll have to brief the prefects, or something. Though I personally think there are more important things to be dealt with than a couple of kids in need of after-dinner snacks.’

Hajime nods. ‘I can do it at dinner tonight.’

‘Thanks. I was hoping to skip that; I need to finish this blasted essay.’

‘Don’t worry – I’m perfectly capable of handling the prefects.’ He pats down the earth around the last seedling and starts stacking the trays. ‘You do know that you need food, though?’

She winks at him, brushing earth off her hands and moving to collect her gloves and hat. ‘That’s what the after-dinner snacks are for. Thanks for the time-out – I’ll see you in class tomorrow!’

She’s already passed the Mandrakes on her way to the door when he calls her back. The idea is sudden, barely formed.

‘Hey, Yui – speaking of responsibilities.’

‘Hm?’

‘What do you think about going to the ball together?’

She looks at him sharply for a moment just this side of uncomfortably long, but then she smiles. ‘It would surely be very representative.’

Hajime snorts. ‘That, and it would also be much more fun than going with someone who might think I want to date her.’

Over by the self-fertilising shrub, Yui crosses her arms. ‘Way to friendzone a girl, Iwaizumi Hajime.’

Hajime chokes, then facepalms mentally. He’s never entertained the idea that Yui might be interested in him – sure, they’ve been working together a lot more closely this year, and they sometimes have breakfast or dinner together or take night patrols; she’s brought him a cupcake from Hogsmeade once during a particularly stressful week and sometimes they do homework together in their office just because it’s nice and quiet there and the setting sun slants in just so on early afternoons, but that’s all felt… companionate, and surely she knows– does she, though?

It’s only when she laughs that he realises he’s been staring at her, dumbfounded and probably slightly panicked.

‘Relax, I’m kidding. Though that _was_ not your brightest moment in terms of tact.’

The air in the greenhouse thankfully returns to more normal levels of stuffiness.

‘Ugh, yeah, sorry. That was terrible phrasing. And, uh, listen, if you’d rather think it over and maybe keep your options open, please feel free to – that was just a spur-of-the-moment idea.’

‘You do know how to make me feel so very wanted’, Yui manages, before breaking into giggles again.

This time, Hajime facepalms physically too, and then can’t help but laugh along with her.

When they get their bearings back, Yui is flushed under her woollen hat. She tugs it off again and carts a hand through her hair, which only results in further disarray.

‘It’s fine’, she says, traces of mirth still in her voice but quickly evaporating. ‘It’s a good idea, actually; I think it will be fun, too. And honestly, going with a friend is probably for the best.’ Her face looks complicated in a way that Hajime files away for later, but it’s quickly smoothed over with determination.

‘Right.’ She pulls the hat back on with a gesture of finality. ‘I better get going. Can you do me a favour, though, and maybe not make the going-as-friends-thing all too public?’

At his curious look, she flaps her hands hurriedly. ‘Like, obviously no need to pretend we’re dating or anything, just… my friends will be much easier to handle if they think there’s a sliver of a chance. Apparently, what I need is _ro–_ ugh, never mind, that was a stupid idea. Please just forget it.’

The flush is a blush now, more vivid on her right cheek than on her left. She looks about ready to bolt, so Hajime quickly shakes his head.

‘No, sure, no problem. There won’t be much need for lying anyway, probably – I _do_ enjoy spending time with you, after all.’

Yui blinks, then takes a deep breath. ‘There you go. That was much smoother. Now only, next time don’t ask someone out sitting down and with dirt on your hands – and your face.’ She flashes him a grin that’s shaky only at the edges and ducks out the door, letting in a blast of freezing air.

‘Noted!’, he calls after her.

‘See you tomorrow!’, Yui yells back, and firmly pushes the door shut.

Oikawa takes to the news with… well, Hajime isn’t quite sure what it is, actually. Certainly not grace, given that he drops his spoon and splatters himself as well as the fifth-year next to him with spiced tomato and pumpkin soup. She lets out a surprised yelp and at the sound, Oikawa’s usual vapid mask slips in place with something akin to relief.

‘I am so sorry’, he apologizes with practiced charm. ‘I was just so surprised that Iwa-chan managed to actually find someone who’d date him.’

The girl’s eyes flit to Hajime uncertainly. Next to her, her friends look pointedly down at their plates. If they are embarrassed by Oikawa’s barb, it’s probably not just Hajime’s sensitivities thinking that it was a bit out of line. He gives the girl what he hopes is a reassuring smile and kicks Oikawa’s ankle under the table.

‘I know manners aren’t your strong suit, but do try and do some damage control.’

Oikawa shoots him an unreadable glance, but turns fully to the girl and pulls out his wand. ‘Here, let me.’

Hajime is left in peace to ponder that split-second of unguardedness while Oikawa fusses over the girl, making sure to clean them both off under enough smiles and compliments that she’s blushing bright red by the time he puts his wand away again.

Oikawa is quiet and shifty for the rest of the evening, losing spectacularly against Matsukawa at Chess and afterwards lounging around pretending to read in front of the fire with little page-turning. He’s the first of them to turn in for the night.

When Hajime is half pulled awake by the rustling and metal-on-metal slide of his curtains and a dip in his mattress a few hours later, he can’t honestly say he’s surprised.

Oikawa doesn’t ask before lifting the covers and crawling in beside him, scooting close and moulding himself along Hajime’s back, the entire length of his legs, sneaking an arm across his midriff. One of his knees is poking into Hajime’s thigh, but otherwise he is very good at being a big spoon. Hajime’s own body is sleep-heavy and complacent. It would very much like to lean into Oikawa’s warmth, Oikawa’s heartbeat, steady against Hajime’s shoulder blade through the very thin two layers of cotton separating their bodies.

Oikawa’s forehead comes to rest against the back of Hajime’s head, his exhale ghosting down along his neck all the way under his collar. Just like that, Hajime is wide awake, and pretty sure that every hair on his body is standing on end. He screws his eyes shut and focuses on lying very still.

‘You can’t just do that.’ His voice, still gravelly from sleep, only breaks a little over the last word.

Oikawa slides one cold foot between his ankles in response. ‘Why not?’

Hajime doesn’t answer.

‘Is it because you’re taking Yui-chan to the ball now?’

He shuffles further down and obnoxiously tugs a corner of the pillow along with him, jostling Hajime’s head. The tip of his nose, a little cold too, trails along Hajime’s neck and shoulder, and when he speaks next, his whisper is muffled by Hajime’s pyjama.

‘Or is it the same reason I’m not supposed to call you by your first name… Hajime?’

The cheeky dramatic pause nearly does Hajime in. Or maybe it’s Oikawa’s voice, low and sure, his name said like that in the darkness. Like it’s not at all foreign to Oikawa. Like he says it in his head as often as Hajime says ‘Tooru’.

He doesn’t answer.

Oikawa, who has no idea how close but also how wrong he is, presses his forehead between Hajime’s shoulder blades. They fall asleep like that.

When he wakes the next morning, Oikawa is on his own bed, cross-legged and whistling under his breath while drying his hair.

‘I can’t deal with this anymore’, Oikawa announces dramatically from Hajime’s left, where he’s slouching in his chair in a pool of pale winter sunlight, half-obscured by a sizeable stack of reference books. ‘I am much too beautiful to get up and look for a book for the eighth time this afternoon. Iwa-chan, go for me.’

Hajime contemplates flipping him off, but he has four fingers stuck precariously in his own book, each marking a different page, and a freshly inked quill in the other hand, so he settles for shaking his head. ‘Nope.’

Oikawa sighs out an enormous breath and drapes himself across Hajime’s shoulder in a sloppy side hug.

‘Please’, he whines in his ear. ‘I’m very tired and I need my strength for afternoon practice, and the dance lesson. It’s very physically demanding to always dance with all the prettiest girls.’

Turning his head would bring Hajime nose to nose with him, so he keeps his eyes fixed on his homework and tries – unsuccessfully – to shrug him off. ‘Go yourself, I’m busy.’

Oikawa stares at him in the unnervingly alert way that means he isn’t truly convinced, but then he smushes his face into Hajime’s shoulder, apparently giving up.

‘Fine. I see the great Oikawa-san must once again show you the meaning of true friendship. I’ll go, _and_ I’ll also get us all some snacks.’

He straightens, one hand lingering on Hajime’s back like he’s forgotten it there. ‘Makki, what do you want?’

Hanamaki, who has been expertly ignoring him so far, doesn’t stop scribbling, but purses his lips thoughtfully. ‘Anything with sugar, really. Or coffee. Or both.’

Oikawa hums. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He bounces once on his heels, brings his hands together in a business-like clap, appropriately softened for the library, and pivots to go.

‘You’re not going to ask me?’, Hajime gets out belatedly. The space on his back where Oikawa’s hand has been still feels warmer than the rest of him.

From the shadow of the stacks, Oikawa glances back at him over his shoulder, in that playful half-profile pose he uses with his fan club, too. From that angle, Hajime suddenly understands why some of them squeal when he does that.

‘Oh Iwa-chan’, Oikawa murmurs, his voice curling across the space between them like smoke, ‘I already know what you want.’

With that, he takes off, a purposeful spring in his step.

Once he’s safely out of sight, Hajime allows himself to pitch forward until his forehead rests against cool, crinkly pages. Hanamaki reaches across the table to pat his head in a gesture of consolation.

‘I agree, man, that was low.’

Hajime just sighs in response. It’s nice, being petted by Hanamaki and not having to look at Oikawa for a while. He’s a bit much sometimes, to look at. Hanamaki continues scribbling with his other hand, the scratching of quill on parchment soothing Hajime into a doze. He hasn’t slept enough last night, what with busting some ‘duelling’ first-year would-be rivals in the trophy room (why is it always the trophy room? One of the least suitable places for a duel in the entire castle, something always shatters and inevitably someone hears), or the night before, come to think of it, with the food-poisoning incident in the Slytherin second-year boys’ dorm, and it seems the exhaustion is happy to catch up with him now.

Just as he is about to nod off properly, someone rounds the nearest corner of shelves. After seven years of sharing a dorm, they can all tell each other apart in the dark – this particular cadence of steps is Matsukawa, who is safe, so Hajime doesn’t bother lifting his head.

‘Yo’, Hanamaki says by means of a greeting, also without bothering to stop either writing or petting Hajime’s hair.

From the sound of it, Matsukawa is now leaning on the empty chair next to Hanamaki, drumming his fingers on the oak wood. ‘First I run into Oikawa down by the kitchen, food-hunting for all of you, and now this heart-warming display of affection. What’s up?’

‘Iwaizumi’s having a gay crisis.’

‘Looks more like a nap to me.’

‘I didn’t come here for you to make fun of me’, Hajime grumbles half-heartedly. The words taste like paper. He sits up reluctantly, dislodging Hanamaki’s hand, and attempts a glare that turns into more of a squint. The candles have come on while he’s been face-down on the table, and there’s a particularly bright huddle of them hovering right behind Matsukawa’s head.

‘Shh, yes, you did’, Hanamaki soothes, giving him one last pet for good measure. ‘Levity makes everything better.’

Hajime ignores him in favour of eyeing Matsukawa, who is now rounding the table and peering at him intently.

‘Do I have ink on my face or something?’

‘Nah. You do look a bit shit though.’

Hajime mentally shakes himself. ‘Just tired. I could do with a night without some godawful lower-year shenanigans. At least we were inventive.’

‘True. We were legendary.’ Matsukawa slides into Oikawa’s vacant seat, unceremoniously shoving books and papers across the table to make space for his elbows. ‘Still set on not telling him?’

He’s like a bloodhound, once on a scent. Experience gained in seven years of friendship tells Hajime that he might as well talk now. He leans back in his chair. To his right, Hanamaki diligently draws a question mark behind his latest sentence and gets started on a new paragraph. To his left, Matsukawa is looking at him patiently. Somehow, Hajime feels both slightly caged in and reassuringly shielded.

He talks.

‘I don’t see the point, honestly. There’s no way he likes me back that way, and telling him would just make everything unnecessarily awkward.’

‘Not everyone is as in touch with their burgeoning gay feelings as you are’, Hanamaki muses.

‘Ha ha’, Hajime retorts sarcastically.

Hanamaki finally puts down his quill and regards him pensively. ‘Actually, I’m not sure I’m joking.’

‘You’re not?’

‘I mean, I don’t want to get your hopes up. But he certainly doesn’t _like_ that you’ve got a date for the Yule Ball.’

Matsukawa hums. ‘He’s kind of possessive. More so than usual. Very touchy-feely, too.’

Hajime shakes his head and tries to subtly un-clench his jaw. ‘He was always going to freak out about the idea of me potentially being in a relationship. It’s a _him_ thing. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Besides, even if it did, it doesn’t matter until he realises _why_ he’s freaking out.’

Hanamaki and Matsukawa share a glance.

‘What?’, Hajime presses. ‘You can’t seriously think that springing this on him now would be a good idea.’

Matsukawa lifts one shoulder. Hanamaki frowns at him and he slowly lets it sink down again, his face entirely expressionless.

‘Not now’, Hanamaki says, turning back to Hajime and sounding matter-of-fact. ‘If for no other reason, we have the Ravenclaw game next week. Can’t have both of you out of sorts for that.’

Hajime splutters. ‘I’m not _out of sorts_!’ At least, he’s pretty sure he isn’t. Else surely someone – Oikawa, most likely – would have already given him an earful about it.

Matsukawa snorts.

‘Next time I catch you staring at him wistfully from across the pitch, I’ll aim at you instead of the hoop’, Hanamaki threatens cheerfully.

Something lifts, or settles. Levity, perhaps.

‘That supposed to worry me? Your aim is piss-poor.’

When Oikawa returns a few minutes later with a greasy bag of pastries, it’s to the sight of the two of them good-naturedly grappling across the table. He stops short, looking primly scandalised, and points an accusatory finger at Matsukawa, who is still in Oikawa’s chair, peacefully doodling on a half-written essay.

‘Really, Mattsun? You exploit my pure and kind heart to usurp my rightful place at Iwa-chan’s side? And—is that my homework?!’

In the instant before Hajime lets go of Hanamaki’s nose just in time to catch the pastry bag that plummets to the ground when Oikawa lunges at Matsukawa, before Hanamaki snatches it away and rips into it with gleeful abandon to the soothing background noise of Oikawa’s ranting, subdued considerably by Matsukawa’s hand clamped firmly over his mouth, in that one quiet, suspended instant, Matsukawa throws Hajime a meaningful glance and mouths a single word:

‘Possessive.’

They each hold a surgery of some kind for an hour a week, Yui on Monday afternoons, Hajime on Wednesday evenings. These sessions are private and confidential, and while sometimes no one shows up, more often than not there’s a steady trickle of between three and ten students who have something on their minds, their problems ranging from falling behind in class to coping with illnesses and family troubles.

Today, Hajime is using the lull after his second visitor, a distraught first-year who stumbled in with three poorly-marked essays clutched in his hand, to leaf through an imposing leather-bound tome titled _International Wizarding Classification of Magical and Non-Magical Diseases and Other Health Issues (127 th edition)_ that some previous student representative has conveniently forgotten to return to the library. He’s pretty sure that dyslexia is in the Muggle ICD, but the wizarding world is sometimes bizarrely backwards about these kinds of things. Given that the boy, a Muggle-born, has an official diagnosis from his second year of elementary school, but no apparent accommodations have been made for him at Hogwarts, Hajime suspects rather that he’s going to find either nothing at all, or a very simple helpful spell that somehow no one has yet taught to the kid.

He doesn’t find anything indexed under ‘d’ and starts turning pages to search under ‘r’. Frankly, another thing the wizarding world is backwards at, apart from reader-friendly font sizes, is access to information. Even if someone had bothered to adapt Hogwarts’ protective magic to allow for anything more technologically advanced than the mechanical grandfather clock that is asthmatically wheezing away in the corner behind the desk, the internet and telecommunications remain overwhelmingly Muggle, and there is nothing remotely comparable to Wikipedia for any magic-related matters. He half-resigns himself to a trip to the library after dinner and wishes, for the n-th time in his seven years at Hogwarts, that someone would already develop a ctrl+f spell.

There is nothing under ‘r’, either. Before he can think of any other potential keywords, someone knocks on the doorframe.

Hajime closes the book and gets up to round his desk. ‘Come in’, he calls.

The room is large enough to hold prefect meetings, with the two desks pushed together in one corner next to the grandfather clock and a lopsided shelf full of old paperwork, and the rest of the space given over to more informal furniture – a large, sagging four-seater of worn green plush and a spindly Edwardian sofa reupholstered with floral print grouped in front of the fireplace with an assortment of mismatched armchairs, and by the window a low coffee table with two faded chintz chairs that Hajime is now making a beeline for.

The door opens and in slips Oikawa, wearing his Quidditch robes and a cheerful expression. ‘Hello, Iwa-chan.’

Hajime’s chest tightens briefly and pathetically, like it sometimes does of late, when Oikawa pops up somewhere unexpectedly. He ignores it and takes the remaining few steps to the window to sit down in one of the chintz chairs.

Oikawa closes the door behind himself. He’s never shown up to one of these sessions before, although Hajime almost expected him to in the beginning, when he was still trying to insert himself into as many of Hajime’s new duties as possible. Hajime tries and fails to gauge his intent, so he settles for neutral.

‘Something I can do for you?’

Oikawa doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he crosses the room, stoops to select two hobnobs from the plate on the table and stuffs them into his mouth, then sinks into the other chair with a contented sigh, chewing vigorously. His legs stretch out under the table until his feet, crossed at the ankles, almost touch Hajime’s. Closer up, he smells of wet air and fresh sweat, like he’s just come in from the pitch. There is a streak of mud across his flank that’s probably going to rub off on the chair.

Hajime raises his eyebrows expectantly.

In response, Oikawa gestures to his bulging cheeks with an apologetic head-twitch-and-half-shrug and somehow manages to speed up his chewing even further. Finally, he swallows, graces Hajime’s obvious impatience with a close-lipped little smile and leans forward, steepling his fingers.

‘I’d like to talk about a problem I have’, he says placidly.

Hajime makes a non-committal sound. Oikawa isn’t usually straightforward about anything that truly bothers him, and there is something mocking to the eager forward angle of his back and shoulders.

‘I have a friend who’s so busy this year that he’s neglecting me terribly. What should I do?’

Hajime levels an unimpressed glare at him. ‘You should stop wasting his time, then maybe there would be some left over for you at the end of the day.’

Oikawa gasps, but immediately ruins the effect by taking another biscuit. ‘You’re so rude, Iwa-chan! Is this how you talk to everyone who asks you for advice?’

‘No one else is at your level of annoying.’

At this, Oikawa slumps, hunching over his biscuit protectively. ‘I just miss Iwa-chan’, he whines. ‘You promised that it wouldn’t be any different, but you barely have time for me anymore. It’s all just admin and rounds and taking care of people who aren’t me.’

Given the content of that sentence, Hajime’s heart shouldn’t be doing this lurch thing. For several different very sensible reasons, really. Embarrassingly, it takes a little more effort than usual to insult Oikawa, but he manages a sigh.

‘You’re such a brat.’

‘And now there’s Yui, too’, Oikawa pouts, looking up at him through his fringe.

‘God forbid I have friends besides you.’

‘You’ve got Makki and Mattsun, and the whole team’, Oikawa mutters stubbornly, then seems to rally. ‘And that’s _not_ my point – you skipped the Three Broomsticks with us last weekend to go look at dresses with her!’

‘She’s going to the ball with me’, Hajime points out. ‘Shouldn’t you be happy I followed your advice and got myself a _representative_ partner?’

Oikawa looks away, scowling, and takes a sullen bite out of his hobnob. Crumbs rain into his lap. The streak of mud on his side is crumbling too, flaking. Hajime is suddenly, inexplicably annoyed with the movement of Oikawa’s chin as he chews, the way his hip presses into the chintz.

He means to tell him to brush off the mud, but what comes out instead is: ‘You could have asked me if you wanted to spend time together so badly.’

Oikawa jerks around, face arrested mid-chew. For four agonising seconds, pedantically punctuated by the ticking of the clock, they stare at each other.

Then Oikawa lets out a high-pitched giggle. ‘Right.’

Hajime’s soul briefly leaves his body, probably to go wonder why he keeps doing this to himself. They keep slipping out, these off-handed half-confessions, like he’s testing the waters – innocuous enough to be nothing more than their usual banter, which has always bordered on flirtatious, though usually more on Oikawa’s side than on his. Just now, he miscalculated, but Oikawa was ruffled only for a terrifying moment. If he had taken Hajime seriously, there would have been a longer pause, a stilling, then a gentleness perfected with practice. For a moment, he wonders uselessly whether that would have felt worse than the laughter.

‘… have to ask the person you want to date, Iwa-chan’, Oikawa is babbling when he tunes back in. ‘Going as friends is defeating the whole purpose of the ball!’

It takes a few more seconds of strained silence before Hajime realises that he’s expecting an answer. He takes a breath, trying to relax his diaphragm, and goes for the easiest way out.

‘What if I’d prefer not to date anyone?’

‘Then you’re just plain boring!’

Hajime barks out a disbelieving laugh. ‘Do you hear yourself sometimes?’

Oikawa scrunches up his forehead, uncomprehending, and reaches for the table again. Hajime smacks his hand away.

‘Stop eating the goddamn biscuits!’ Rationally, he knows he can only blame Oikawa for so much of his anger about this cavalier heart-breaker approach to high school romance – the less abstract part of it is on Hajime himself. Still, he remembers the undiluted happiness on the face of the pretty sixth-year girl and gives Oikawa a black look. ‘I hope you’re at least serious about your date this time. Merlin knows she’s excited, telling it to everyone who will listen.’

‘I’m always serious about my conquests, Iwa-chan!’, Oikawa protests, cradling his hand and looking wounded.

Unsurprisingly, that does nothing to temper Hajime’s annoyance. ‘You do know that people have feelings, right?’, he snaps.

‘And I am an expert at feelings’, Oikawa counters, but it sounds off, like he doesn’t quite know whether to go for superior or reassuring. There’s an unsure flicker to his mouth. It’s not enough.

Hajime is suddenly very tired. ‘You’re full of shit, is what you are. Now please leave, I’m sure there’s people with actual problems they’d like to talk about.’

Oikawa’s eyes widen, then narrow. He leans back, twisting his neck into the wary slant that makes it seem like he has two or three more cervical vertebrae at his disposal than an average person. Neither of them is looking down, or moving. Hajime’s pulse throbs in his wrist where it’s lying on the edge of the table. He debates getting up to demonstratively return to his desk, but it feels wrong. He’s never walked away from Oikawa, much less run from him.

Finally, Oikawa blinks and stands. He brushes crumbs from his robes, biding for time. When Hajime doesn’t react, he stalks stiffly towards the door, but stops again with a hand on the handle. In his Quidditch robes, his shoulders are surprisingly broad. A ripple goes over them.

‘I was serious about missing you, you know’, he says softly, without turning around.

Hajime thinks about getting up and crossing the room, about twisting his hands in Oikawa’s robes and _pulling_. He thinks about being kind to himself and what that entails.

He stays where he is.

Oikawa sighs. ‘I have some astronomy homework to finish. Come find me when you’re done?’

He walks away like he knows not to expect an answer, leaving the door just ajar.

Hajime swears once, quietly, rubbing his face. Then he takes a hobnob and goes back to work. In between a third-year Ravenclaw who enquires about the procedure involved in starting a Rune Riddles club and a sixth-year Gryffindor who’s concerned about band choices for the ball, he finds a not entirely useless dyslexia classification and some potentially helpful spells tucked away under ‘word blindness’ and copies them out for the Ravenclaw head of house.

Finally, a few minutes after eight laborious strokes from the grandfather clock announced the end of his allotted hour, the _IWCD_ is returned to the shelf, the ink-pot is closed, his notes tidied away, and there is nothing left to do. Hajime sits in his creaky chair, in the unsteady puddle of light leaking from the handful of candles floating above the desk, and wonders about taking the seven flights of stairs up to the Astronomy Tower.

Over the years, there have been many things he hasn’t said to Oikawa. Why can this newest one not just join the others, somewhere in a drawer in his mental attic, nestle between the honesty swallowed out of misguided loyalty, the white lies and sparing silences accumulated in give-or-take seventeen years of friendship, and go to sleep? Instead, it keeps wanting to be said. These days, there’s an ever-growing stack of half-aborted sentences, Oikawa, stop, Oikawa, listen, look, Tooru, sitting proudly atop the mental equivalent of Hajime’s kitchen table, or, in Hogwarts terms, probably his bedside drawer, and at least once a day, he walks past it or has to move it in order to get to something else.

The thing is, there have been many things he hasn’t said to Oikawa, but none of them have ever been held back because Oikawa wasn’t ready to hear them. It’s not just out of wishful thinking that Hajime half believes Hanamaki is onto something, offering up _he certainly doesn’t like it that you’ve got a date_. He knows Oikawa in a way that goes deeper than observation and memory. It’s almost intuitive, instinctual – the same knowledge that tells him how Oikawa is likely to move on the pitch, with no need to look at him, something born of years piled on years of shared breakfasts and beds, losses and victories, socks and pencils and cutlery, spaces, days. It’s too deep below the surface for any kind of conscious understanding.

He dredges Oikawa’s face back up, the whip of his head around, not simply slack-jawed, really, but all lines of his face fallen, teetering between shock and something else, not quite terror, neither epiphany nor rejection. Oikawa’s face, the spatter of soup on his glasses, the rapid flit into surprise of something that might have been almost fear. Oikawa indifferent is Oikawa still. Perhaps that rapid motion, that momentary loss of control, is the most identifiable indicator of hope.

When Hajime steps out onto the Astronomy Tower, a sharp wind tugs on his robes. The covered telescopes are bulky shapes atop the wall, their tarpaulins meticulously lashed down. Under the overcast sky, Oikawa is sitting against the wall, head tipped back and hands empty. The air around him shimmers with a localised warming charm. He doesn’t move at the clang of the heavy door falling shut, or at the sound of Hajime’s boots on the flagstones, only looks up through half-lidded eyes once Hajime is standing over him. The line of his nose is sharp in the light spilling from the lantern over the door, its tip red from the cold.

‘I thought you had homework’, Hajime says.

‘I did. But I’ve been done for a while.’

‘So what were you doing?’

‘Dunno’, Oikawa says, still considering him from under his lashes. ‘Just sitting here being beautiful. But now that you’re here–’, he jumps up, the shift from stillness to energy so rapid that Hajime blinks in surprise, ‘let’s fly!’

And he produces, with a flourish, their brooms.

Hajime feels a laugh startled out of him, one incredulous syllable. ‘How did you even get these up here?’

‘Please, Iwa-chan’, Oikawa sighs. ‘I’m a wizard. Now fly with me?’

 _You can’t just do that_ folds itself away under Hajime’s tongue, tamely now in the face of Oikawa’s wariness and his waiting. Hajime searches his face and finds nothing, and his little pain raises its tireless head. He thinks of Oikawa’s voice pressed between his shoulder blades and lets it, and with something like curiosity watches it crest and subside again, acquiescent almost, almost reassured.

‘Stop thinking so hard’, Oikawa’s voice prods, then tips effortlessly into annoying. ‘It’s easy. You grip the handle, like this, and then you swing one leg over the–’

‘Fine’, Hajime cuts in and grabs his broom from Oikawa’s hand.

Oikawa beams. ‘On my count! One, two–’

Hajime pushes off the ground. Behind him, Oikawa’s indignant shout drowns in the rushing of the wind that beats his robes and drives water from his eyes. He shoots upwards, twisting his neck to catch sight of Oikawa’s sleek form, practically lying flat on his broom. For one, then two curves, a breath-stopping dip between the towers, and a long, hard sweep out towards the forest, he’s ahead, around him only air, and veiled moonlight glinting dully off the roofs of the castle and greenhouses below. Nothing moves there.

The moment he slows, Oikawa catches up and pushes his shoulder, complaining about the false start. Hajime looks at the relief settled in the corners of his mouth and flies a lazy loop around his lecture, then sets a comfortable pace southward. They leave the lights of the castle behind, steadily climbing under the pot-bellied clouds. After a while, they just hover in place. Oikawa tilts his head and fixes his eyes on a point somewhere above, apparently content to stay like that. Hajime watches the wind pull on his hair and his robes, the strange cold light catching on the slant of his neck. The twitch of a muscle in his cheek, like a lone word bit back. Oikawa breathes a sigh, the sound of fabric against wood.

It’s freezing. One, two minutes more and Hajime won’t be able to feel his ears and fingers.

He can’t see the ground. He also can’t remember the last time he’s felt so weightless. The land stretches out unseen beneath them, the earth steady with the patience of growing things.

**Author's Note:**

> (I know the Yule Ball technically only happens when the Triwizard Tournament also happens, but shh, everything about this fic is self-indulgent and canon is not real.)


End file.
